Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Ad Hominem Quote of the Day

I recently left an innocent comment on a blog that mentioned Köstenberger's helpful review of Bauckham's book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. I wasn't to know that this would prompt a rather unsympathetic outburst against my series on inerrancy. The whole post, for your reading pleasure, can be found here, but these were my favourite bits:

"I see that Chris Tilling has graced our combox ... Is Tiling even aware of the history of the ETS? If he is, it doesn't show ... What he really means is that he finds certain parts of the Bible unbelievable. And so he wants to see the ETS allow a lower view of Scripture to accommodate the disbelief of theological liberals like himself ... Is Jesus illogical? Is Paul illogical? Is the author of Hebrews illogical? Perhaps a better question would be—is Tilling illogical? However, I'm too tactful to answer that question ... This is a good illustration of Tilling's alarming lack of intellectual sophistication ... Tilling is guilty of bifurcating the witness of Scripture ... Tilling has such an undisciplined mind ... Tilling has done a wonderful job of leaving his brain at the door. He is attacking inerrancy by raising one brainless objection after another ... What is Tilling's problem, exactly? Is it that he's not terribly bright? Is that why he contradicts himself so readily? ... No, the false expectation which illogical minds like Tilling, Funk, and Ehrman are suffering from is the assumption that if Scripture were inerrant and inspired, then there would be no obscurities in the record of Scripture".

Tilling, Funk and Ehrman!

But my absolute favourite bit was this last angry outburst towards the end:

"Actually, nothing is more flippant than the way in which Tilling rattles off one lame-brained objection after another. Tilling is one of these conceited individuals who prides himself on his intellectual attainments when, in fact, his actual performance is distinguished by its slipshod, anti-intellectualism"

Ah these guys, you gotta love em! Some of you may well be thinking what I've been thinking, but CTRVHM is making no official statement at this moment. I'm confident, however, that any who read my series on inerrancy (and the discussion in the comments) after his post can make up their own minds as to whether the position I'm promoting is really lame-brained or not!

You will notice that he wittily titled his post 'Tilling less than thrilling'. Even rhyming!

Of course, my poetic skills have already been abundantly demonstrated on my blog (here and here, for example), as so I felt obliged to respond in like manner. But I couldn't really get much to rhyme with 'Steve Hays'. 'Hays loves gays' couldn't be proved, and nothing else was funny enough, so I've landed with the poetic 'Hays writes a blog post'.

12 Comments:

"Perhaps a better question would be—is Tilling illogical? However, I'm too tactful to answer that question ... This is a good illustration of Tilling's alarming lack of intellectual sophistication ... Tilling is guilty of bifurcating the witness of Scripture ... Tilling has such an undisciplined mind ... Tilling has done a wonderful job of leaving his brain at the door. He is attacking inerrancy by raising one brainless objection after another"

What he means by tact is not running over you with his 4X4 pickup and then dragging you through the campus of Liberty University.

Wow! That must take an ad hominem prize. Let's see if we can class a British evangelical doctoral student with the deceased founder of the Jesus Seminar and a self-confessed agnostic. Wow!

Reminds me of this time a few years back when I was invited to a small Christian college to debate a professor about "Christian Zionism" (which I consider to be a heresy). The professor was polite and the debate was fun. When it was time for questions, the first one I fielded was, "Why do you hate God and love terrorists?" Suddenly, I was having less fun. :-)

Quote of the day: "Chris Tilling is not the anti-Christ, he's just a very naughty boy!" (MFB)

The principal of my college is writing a very interesting book on Scripture with a chapter title called: "The European Alternative to Inerrancy". He basically follows Orr, Bavinck and Kuyper in asserting infallibility instead of inerrancy, as per the WCF. Will be one to read.

(Combining the title of a classic Simon & Garfunkel tune along with a line from Richard the Third.)

Steve Hays attempts to smite atheists as well as Catholics as well as Protestant non-Calvinist non-inerrantist Christians with equal virulence. Sometimes I fear he gets them mixed up, at least emotionally, within the tiny fish bowel of his own personal theologi-verse.

Dave Armstrong, the Catholic web-pologist noted in his interactions with Hays that Hays blamed him for being a wordy prolific writer, and Dave then proceeded to point out that out of the three web-pologists considered to be the most wordy, i.e., Dave Armstrong, J.P. Holding of Tekton apologetics, or Hays's own Triablogue site, Hays won the contest for number of words composed each week, well ahead of the pack.

Steve Hays, J.P. Holding, and Dave Armstrong form a sort of triumverate of enormously prolific writers with enormous websites and/or blogs who appear to be attempting to answer literally every question so it fits quite neatly into their infallible or inerrant theologies. And sometimes they come into conflict with one another's views, as Hays and Holding have shown in regards to Calvinism. Though the fellow from Alpha Omega Ministries, Rev. James White another Calvinist (who apparently runs cruise line apologetics seminars and debates Crossan among others on them), is also quite prolific, and gotten into some wordy spew fests with some of the above.